5/13/10

Are the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Jewish?

Not the right question. Those Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are characters in children's TV shows and movies.

However, it is fair to ask if Haim Saban, "the man who brought the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers from Japan to America" is Jewish? And the answer is yes he is, and he is one of the wealthiest Jews in the world.

He was profiled in New Yorker where we learned that he is,
... the chairman and part owner of Univision, the nation’s leading Spanish-language media company; a staunch supporter of Israel (he has dual citizenship); and one of the largest individual donors to the Democratic Party. “Haim is a force of nature,” his friend Barry Meyer, the chairman and C.E.O. of Warner Bros., said. As a youth in Israel, Saban attended an agricultural boarding school where, he says, immigrants like his parents sent children they could not afford to feed. When he was expelled for being a troublemaker, he began attending a night school, where the principal told him, “You’re not cut out for academic studies; you’re cut out for making money.” The prediction seemed to come true in 2001, when Rupert Murdoch and Saban sold their joint venture, Fox Family Worldwide, to Michael Eisner, the C.E.O. of Disney: Saban made one and a half billion dollars. It was—and still is, he points out—the biggest cash transaction by an individual in the history of Hollywood. In March, Forbes estimated his net worth at $3.3 billion...more...

1 comment:

David Bar Nahum said...

Haim Saban is not only Jewish, (born in Alexandria but grew up in Israel and served in the Israeli army) but very affiliated and strongly pro-Israel. He is a big "baal tzedaka" (very charitable), and among his many charitable endeavors is support for the Israel Film Festival, and patronage of Israeli artists.